Being a SAHD (Stay-At-Home Dad)

I'm writing about being a stay-at-home dad because it's one of the most wonderful things that I have ever decided to do and I believe there will be a lot more of us in the future in this new world order. To quote Robert Kiyosaki of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" fame, we are moving from the Industrial Age in to the IT Age.
So what is the mindset to go from "man - the fire bringer and bacon winner" to "man - the fire keeper and the several ways to use bacon in cooking"? Well, I think the answer is in the start of this sentence - it's mindset. For some, it will be easier to re-programme the script than for others. I do believe, however, that it is that simple, just a question of re-programming the script. Some men not even want to tamper with the script that they have been handed down from the Industrial Age paradigm: go to school son, get good grades, go to university, get a good job, work your way up through the ranks, find a nice girl, settle down, have kids, work your way up the corporate ladder (perhaps only to find that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall!)..". You see where I'm going with this, right? I'm sure 99.99999% of men (and women) do. I certainly do because I used to be that person. I jumped ship before I was pushed (the company of 14 that I worked in let 3 people go shortly after I left) and I'm so delighted that I did. I jumped ship onto a personal yacht of a wonderful home business that I will save for another story although I mention it because it helped greatly in me stepping out of my comfort zone.
So what's it like being a SAHD (stay-at-home dad)? Well dads, how gut-wrenching it to leave your kids to go earn money for someones else's dreams? I'll be honest, I don't even want to think about a whole day (1.5hrs each way in traffic on top of an 8hr day) being without Samuel. He'd be in bed by the time I got home, I'd have to sleep in a separate bedroom to my wife so that I could get enough sleep to function during the day and I'm sure his cry would grate on my last nerve because I was so tired. Poor little mite. And of course I'd justify it by saying that I was providing for my family. An excuse that reminds me of the days when I used to be a smoker: I live in Ireland where the weather is, for the most part, awful. When the smoking ban came in, I would smoke in ALL kinds of weather and justify it to justify my addiction. Terrible.
The life I do lead, so I don't have to speculate, is one of fullness. There is no alarm for me to get up to so I usually take the 1am, 5am feeds and my wife Mary takes the rest. We/She breast feeds so I we only use the bottle about 2-3 times a day. Apart from that I change his nappies/diapers and change him for bed or in to his day clothes. At the time of writing (Feb 22 2009) he is only 5 weeks old so all he really does is sleep, eat and crap so I have a lot more to look forward to in his development.
So what does the future hold for Samuel? Well, my wife and I have agreed to teach him using the Glen Doman, Gentle Revolution materials (which I would highly encourage every parent to look into as an option) which will be left primarily for me to do as my wife wants to go back to work to finish some goals that she has set for herself. So me and Sam, walking the dogs as spring and summer come in, we're heading off to Hawaii in July of 09 with the business for two weeks and we have enrolled him in a Gael Scoil (Irish speaking school) just around the corner from us and, well, anything else that we choose to do! We would like that his life have no limits and I'm working towards that now. I'm so excited about the future yet careful to appreciate every minute of the present. People who haven't seen him for even a week say that he has grown so much but I don't notice myself as I'm with him every waking (and sleeping) hour.
For those of you who don't know Sam "Make Every Day Saturday" Crowley's story, it's a great one and I suggest it to any dad who is working his ass off becuase he feels he has no choice.
Ok, that's it for my first attempt... I really enjoyed writing it so I hope you enjoy reading it. What I would like at this point is for your feed back, your critique, your opinion, your stories. What good if we don't share?

is looking forward to introducing his new members on the European Team Call tonight. :) I'm so excited about the choice they have made.

is having another wonderful day. My son has been feeding for the last 3 hours!

The purpose of the herd is, and always will be, to keep people in the herd. So many jobless people now recognising that they have surrendered their income ability to the hands of someone else.

"Look at me, look at me, look at me now, it is fun to have fun but you have to know how!" - The Cat in the Hat. Reading Fox In Socks makes me feel great too... Thank you Dr. Seuss

What a day! What a life! To give feels truly better than to receive. :)

What a day! What a life!

Another great day looking after my wife and son and and helping people to realise the life they want. Looking forward to the 6 nations rugby and my cousin's birthday at the weekend too.

When the going gets tough...

When I look back at my life as a smoker, I see now what an addiction that smoking is. I was happy to justify my smoking to serve my habit. I loved smoking so much that I would happily smoke in all sorts of weather (I live in Ireland!). I loved them and thankfully, at the time, I had a boss who understood me popping out for smoke breaks. Now that I run a business, I see how understanding. Imagine the downtime he allowed me to sate my habit? I see now how we (my wife smoked as well) were controlled by the smoking despite our lip service to the contrary.
So it is with the live I lead now. When I look back at my life as an employee and how I justified my unhappiness. Psychologists call it "learned helplessness". The experiment was done on dogs in a partitioned cage. They were given that were given no means of escape and were given a mild electric shock. After this constantly happening even when the dogs were given a means to escape to the other side of the partition, they didn't. They had learned to be helpless. Their reasoning was "this bad thing has happened to me so often with no means of escape, what's the point even looking?". A form of this is used in training elephants too but that would take me off on a tangent.
So that was my life for 15 years, learned helplessness. I wish my boss would give me a raise but what am I going to do? I wish my boss would give me more holidays but what am I going to do? I wish I could start work later in the day but what am I going to do? I need the money so I had to play the game, right? Well you tell me, is a J.O.B. (Just Over Broke in case you haven't heard it before) the only way in this world to make money?
Now thanks to pioneers such as Dr. Martin Seligman psychologists have opened up a whole new field of thinking called "learned optimism". If you can learn to be helpless surely the converse is true? Can't we learn to be happy? Surely if we take note of all the good things that happen in our lives, if we take note how many of those occurrences are attributed directly to actions that we have taken, that surely as there is learned helplessness, there is learned optimism. And so it is in my life. I have taken ownership of my actions and of my life. When something goes wrong the error is not pervasive. My life isn't going to terrible in all areas.
So here's 411: people of my age (I'm 40) have lived through recessions before, they're not the end of the world. We came out the far side with appreciation for what we have now. And even that was forgotten in the height of the good times. You don't even have to have lived through a recession to know that it's not the be all and end all - the world is still here for God's sake. Society is still here, it still exists! In my time it was "The Bomb". Both the US and Russia (as it was then) had stockpiled an awesome amount of nuclear power. Organisations such a CND, with their logo were ubiquitous. Our lives were lived in fear and there was a recession on too. Many of my friends sought work overseas (thank you America!) but the one thing I do remember is... the music. Filled with inspiration, hope, rebellion.
So I'll leave this with you: because of this economic climate and the mindset I'm in due to the home business I'm in, I making money... Or to quote Mark Twain "I experienced many problems in my life, some of them real."